The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
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in our thoughts, for out of these thoughts spring all our deeds, and from these deeds come equitable results. We cannot seize good results violently, like a thief, and claim and enjoy them, but we can bring them to pass by setting in motion the causes within ourselves.
Men strive for money, sigh for happiness, and would gladly possess wisdom, yet fail to secure these things, while they see others to whom these blessings appear to come unbidden. The reason is that they have generated causes which prevent the fulfilment of their wishes and efforts.
Each life is a perfectly woven network of causes and effects, of efforts (or lack of efforts) and results, and good results can only be reached by initiating good efforts, good causes. The doer of true actions, who pursues sound methods, grounded on right principles will not need to strive and struggle for good results; they will be there as the effects of his righteous rule of life. He will reap the fruit of his own actions and the reaping will be in gladness and peace.
This truth of sowing and reaping in the moral sphere is a simple one, yet men are slow to understand and accept it. We have been told by a Wise One that “the children of darkness are wiser in their day than the children of light”, and who would expect, in the material world, to reap and eat where he had not sown and planted? Or who would expect to reap wheat in the field where he had sown tares, and would fall to weeping and complaining if he did not? Yet this is just what men do in the spiritual field of mind and deed. They do evil, and expect to get from it good, and when the bitter harvesting comes in all its ripened fullness, they fall into despair, and bemoan the hardness and injustice of their lot, usually attributing it to the evil deeds of others, refusing even to admit the possibility of its cause being hidden in themselves, in their own thoughts and deeds. The children of light — those who are searching for the fundamental principles of right living, with a view to making themselves into wise and happy beings — must train themselves to observe this law of cause and effect in thought, word and deed, as implicitly and obediently as the gardener obeys the law of sowing and reaping. He does not even question the law; he recognizes and obeys it. When the wisdom which he instinctively practices in his garden, is practiced by men in the garden of their minds — when the law of the sowing of deeds is so fully recognized that it can no longer be doubted or questioned — then it will be just as faithfully followed by the sowing of those actions which will bring about a reaping of happiness and well-being for all. As the children of matter obey the laws of matter, so let the children of spirit obey the laws of spirit, for the law of matter and the law of spirit are one; they are but two aspects of one thing; the out-working of one principle in opposite directions.
If we observe right principles, or causes, wrong effects cannot possibly accrue. If we pursue sound methods, no shoddy thread can find its way into the web of our life, no rotten brick enter into the building of our character to render it insecure; and if we do true actions, what but good results can come to pass; for to say that good causes can produce bad effects is to say that nettles can be reaped from a sowing of corn.
He who orders his life along the moral lines thus briefly enunciated, will attain to such a state of insight and equilibrium as to render him permanently happy and perennially glad; all his efforts will be seasonally planted; all the issues of his life will be good, and though he may not become a millionaire as indeed he will have no desire to become such — he will acquire the gift of peace, and true success will wait upon him as its commanding master.
Lesson 1 — The Secret of Success
It is with some hesitation that we bring ourselves to write this little book, entitled “The Secret of Success.” Not that we are not in sympathy with the subject — not that we do not believe that there is a “Secret of Success” — but because there has been so much written on the subject of “Success” that is the veriest twaddle — masses of platitudinous wordiness — that we hesitate to take the position of a teacher of Success. It is so easy to fill pages of paper with good advice — it is so much easier to say things than to do them — so much easier to formulate a code of precepts than to get out into the field of active endeavor and put into practice the same percepts. And, you may imagine why we hesitate to assume a role which would lay us open to the suspicion of being one of the “do as I tell you, and not as I do” teachers of the Art of Success.
But there is another side of the question. There is, besides the mere recital of a List of Good Qualities Leading to Success — a list with which every schoolboy and reader of the magazines is acquainted — a Something Else; and that Something Else, is a suggestion that the Seeker for Success has a Something Within himself which if expressed into activity and action will prove of great value to him — a veritable Secret of Success, instead of a code of rules. And, so we propose to devote this little book to unfolding our idea of what this Something Within is, and what it will do for one who will unfold it and thus express it into action. So, therefore, do not expect to find this book a “Complete Compendium of Rules Conducive to Success, Approved of and Formulated by the Successful Men of the World who became acquainted with these Rules only after they had Attained Success, and consequently had Time and Inclination to Preach to Others.” This is not a book of that sort. It is Quite Different. We hope you will like it — it will do you good in any event.
All people are striving and seeking Success. Their idea of Success may differ, but they have all agreed upon the desirability of Attainment. “Attainment” — that is the word, which embodies the essence of that which we call Success. It is the “Getting-There” idea — the idea of Attainment — of Reaching the Goal for which we set out. That is the story — Attainment.
Many men and women have endeavored to point out the way to Success, and while some have rendered valuable service to those who were following them on the Path of Attainment, yet none have been able to tell the whole story of Success. And this is not to be wondered about, for the reason that on the road to Success each and every individual must be, in a measure a law unto himself, or herself. No two temperaments are exactly alike — Nature delights in variety; no two sets of circumstances are precisely the same — infinite variety manifests here also. And so it would be folly to attempt to lay down rules of universal application, which would surely lead all to the great goal of Success. One has but to look around him on all sides and see the different needs of the different individuals composing the crowd, in order to recognize the futility of any attempt to lay down lines of universal instruction on this subject. Each and every man who has succeeded has done so in a different way — generally along some original lines of action — in fact, the faculty or characteristic known as Individuality, seems to have played an important part in the success of the majority of persons who have attained it. And Individuality renders those possessing it to a marked degree to be likely to depart from any set of rules or laid-out courses of action. And so, it may be stated as a general principle that each must work out his own Success along the lines of his own Individuality, rather than by following any set rule or line of conduct.
In view of what we have just said, it may seem strange that feeling as we do we have ventured to write a little book entitled “The Secret of Success,” — particularly as we have started the said book by declaring the impossibility of laying down any set rules on the subject. This may seem like a paradox, but a little examination will show you that it is not so. It is true that we believe that each and every person must work out his own Success, along the lines of his own Individuality, instead of along some cut-and-dried plan. And right here is where the “Secret of Success” comes in. “Along the lines of his own individuality,” we have just said — then it must follow that one must possess Individuality before he may work along its “lines.” And in the measure that he possesses Individuality, so will he possess the first prerequisite to Success. And that is what we mean by “The Secret of Success” — INDIVIDUALITY.
Every person possesses dormant and latent Individuality — but only a few allow it to express itself. The majority of us are like human sheep trotting along complacently after some self-assertive bellwether, whose tinkling bell serves to guide our footsteps. We have absorbed the notion somehow that these bellwethers possess the sum and substance of human knowledge and power, and ability to think — and instead